Don’t Fire Your PR Consultant: Evidence that the Public Relations Industry has Overcome Challenges in Social Media Marketing

In 2010 Watson Helsby outlined ten challenges facing the PR industry in a comprehensive report titled Digital Communications and Social Media: The Challenges Facing the PR Industry. The underlying theme of two of these challenges was a general lack of understanding and/ or skepticism of digital communications and social media among business leaders. Below, I will outline these two challenges, which Watson Helsby presented, and offer examples of how the PR industry has recently overcome these challenges.

Challenge #1. The aforementioned report noted that the old guard in the PR world lacked understanding when it came to the consequences (both good and bad) of losing editorial control. Watson Helsby explained this challenge by noting, “unlike traditional media, online content doesn’t (generally) have to pass any editorial control and whilst journalists are used to having to make judgments on what is and isn’t a story, consumers don’t have to worry about making such judgments” (p. 14). In other words, whereas in the past a corporation had a great deal of control over its reputation with traditional media by feeding the system closely monitored and expertly crafted press releases, in today’s world of social media anyone can self-publish nearly anything about a corporation without its knowing. Additionally, because research has shown that people trust content coming from their peers over corporate communication (Bernoff & Li, 2011, p. 132), some PR professionals saw this challenge over editorial control as a breaking point in their industry.

Challenge #2. Likewise, Watson Helsby reported that some PR and marketing professionals were skeptical about how the return on investing their time with new media could be measured. Since the effectiveness of campaigns used in traditional media were measured by using well understood metrics, which included frequency and reach, a way in which to measure social media was unclear. As suggested in the Watson Helsby report, instead of using metrics “towards measuring one-off campaigns,” PR professionals “need to make analysis more relevant to the ongoing dialogue used in social media” (p. 20). Nevertheless, this challenge translated into a general skepticism in the PR industry, because it was questioned whether it was possible to provide such an analysis.

Alas, as formidable as these challenges sounded in the 2010 Watson Helsby report, there are already sure signs of success in the digital communications arena among PR departments in major corporations.

Therefore, although consumer generated content might always be considered more trustworthy than sponsored editorial pieces, and even though business leaders will continue to strive to develop workable metrics to measure ROI on their investment in the social landscape, there is evidence that challenges the PR industry was facing three years ago have been successfully overcome. PR specialists have become effective at shaping the news by creating compelling, sponsored content, and the skepticism over whether or not participating in new media can contribute to direct sales, for at least the time being, is not seen as a reason to not develop robust social media marketing plans.

References

Bernoff, J. & Li, C. (2011). Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social